Thirty years after Dredd appeared in comics, he gets an origin story... but not for Dredd himself. His origins we knew. He's a clone of Judge Fargo (although this story slightly retcons some previously mismatching dates, saying that he was fast-grown). No, this is the story of Dredd's entire world. How did America go from a modern democracy to a fascist state that's abolished trial by jury and instead has Judges who'll gun you down in the street?

John Wagner had wanted to write this for years:

"There were many unresolved questions about the origins of the Judge system and some apparent contradictions that required sorting out. It's a task I'd always shied away from because of the difficulty of making sense of it all while still telling a story that was worth reading. But I knew that sometime it had to be done, if for no other reason than my own satisfaction."

The results are massive in scope, questions raised and sheer page count. It's one of 2000 AD's longest Judge Dredd storylines. It took a ten week break halfway through because Carlos Ezquerra was moving house and the editor put the story on hold to avoid using fill-in artists. Wagner and Ezquerra created Dredd back in 1977 and even now are still his definitive writer and artist, both in volume and in importance, so there's rightness in seeing them tell this story. Read today, Ezquerra's an odd kind of artist, the product of a bygone comics era. He's also very European (Spanish), not American. There's a crude "Ezquerra look" about his faces and you can tell his work a mile off, but he's really good both at gritty macho blood-and-thunder and at tonally challenging black comedy. (This story includes a nuclear apocalypse and all-out war between the Judges and the U.S. military and I can't imagine anyone doing that material more wholeheartedly than Ezquerra. Also, see his American work with Garth Ennis, including both war stories and some of Ennis's blackest, wickedest comedy.) Ezquerra also has superb clarity. No matter how complicated the script might be or the action he's having to render visually, his simple, coarse style makes him brilliant at communicating the story and ensuring that you always immediately know what's happening.

There are two storylines here. There's a modern Dredd epic about our fascist anti-heroes going into the Cursed Earth after the body of Fargo, the father of justice. There's plenty of that. It's not just a framing story. Eventually, though, it becomes necessary for Dredd to dig into the truth about Chief Judge Fargo, President Bob Booth and the Great Atom War. Some of this goes way back in the lore. Booth, for instance, was first seen in The Cursed Earth back in 1978. Personally, I loved seeing Head of Genetics Morton Judd as a major figure, knowing where that leads with the Judda in the 1988 Oz storyline. He's the one who started cloning Judges.

What's interesting about this as a Dredd story is its doubts, questions and what-ifs. History didn't have to go this way. We see the pieces topple into place as America chooses fascism and nuclear holocaust. There are moral and ethical question marks all the way through. Dredd in the Cursed Earth isn't there to do good, although anyone messing with him can expect to encounter maximum force and then to have the Judges walking the battlefield afterwards to execute survivors. "It's not our business to interfere."

The Judges have discussions. Dredd himself might be having second thoughts about Justice Department policy regarding mutants. "Maybe it's time things changed." Dredd, a rebel? That I hadn't expected. Soon afterwards, one of the Judges even questions "the whole monk thing", to which Dredd replies with "don't get political".

"And lonelier."

"Yes, perhaps."

The Justice system is built on a lie. Fargo broke his own rules and eventually repudiates them. Dredd's response to that is chilling and thought-provoking, even for him, providing the story's final punchline.

It's hard not to see modern political parallels. John Wagner's American, incidentally. He was born in Pennsylvania and lived there until his parents split up when he was twelve and his mother took the children to her native Scotland. The Booth-Trump similarities are startling. President Booth is a democracy-twisting populist who starts a greedy, misguided war for basically imperialist reasons while ranting about American exceptionalism and privilege. Try reading that today without thinking of Trump and Iran. Even their bombast is similar. "Foreign states have been given every opportunity to come to a reasonable settlement over their reserves. Foolishly, they insist on holding our country to ransom." I was thinking similar thoughts about Batman: Year 100 when reviewing that yesterday, but you can't top Dredd for savage political satire. However, it's coincidental. The story was written in 2007. Today, it's become topical... but it'll probably always be topical. I've seen pre-Trump commentators finding similarities with their own political situation. (The Bush/Cheney national security state "that's only become more deeply entrenched under Obama".)

I bought the Judge Dredd Mega-Collection that also includes:

The Connection (2000 AD 1500-1504), John Wagner and Kev Walker, 30 pages = a bleak, drab noir with boring colours and anti-climactic storytelling choices. It's a prologue to Origins, but also a bit of a shaggy dog story. The grumpy mutant chest-face is an wacky idea that could have been comedic, but is played straight. Also, Kev Walker's style has changed unrecognisably since his fully painted days.

Origins (2000 AD 1505-1517, 2007, 1518-1519, 1529-1535), John Wagner, Carlos Ezquerra, 139 pages = this, on the other hand, has a surprising amount of dark humour in the Cursed Earth with new members of Dredd's extended family. That's a fun (if blood-soaked) adventure before the Extremely Not Fun flashback to a period of history so bad that a global nuclear war isn't the most important bit.

The Spirit of Christmas (2000 AD 2008), John Wagner, Colin MacNeil, 12 pages = how much Christmas spirit can you expect from Joe Dredd? Answer: more than you'd think. He visits his niece (another reminder of his family) and returns to his reformist thoughts in the Cursed Earth. He might be the ultimate brutal enforcer of a terrifying regime, but he cares about the law and about making it better. (Mind you, what I just said about Kev Walker and painted art is true here of Colin MacNeil too.)

With this, Wagner and Ezquerra created a cornerstone of the mythos. To be honest, Dredd never needed this kind of origin story. He's a street judge. His adventures are immediate and in-your-face. Starting with this kind of long backstory would have been completely wrong in 1977... but it's massive that at last we got it, thirty years later. It's asking questions that led into future Dredd storylines, like Day of Chaos and Tour of Duty. If you're a Judge Dredd fan but you haven't read this, I'd guess that means you haven't heard about it yet.